


Matchmaker

by SeriousMoonlight



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bad Matchmaking, Established Relationship, Fluff, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 19:55:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7004248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeriousMoonlight/pseuds/SeriousMoonlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>"Do you want to kiss Solas?" Cole asked the Inquisitor as she undressed for bed. The sudden question made her flail around in her shirt, struggling to unstick her shoulders from the fabric. Cole gently tugged the garment off in one swift motion, leaving Estraven blinking up at him with messy hair.</p>
  <p>"Do I want to kiss Solas?" she repeated.</p>
  <p>"Yes."</p>
</blockquote>Cole doesn't understand why Solas and Estraven won't just hurry up and kiss already.
            </blockquote>





	Matchmaker

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously these poly negotiations are incredibly basic and brushed over, because I didn't want to spend 5,000 words writing out characters negotiating boundaries and expectations. I just wanted to get to the cute stuff. Communicate with your partners, kiddos!

Cole was noticing a lot more lately - things he'd never bothered to pay attention to before. The forgetting was hard now that he was something close to human, but the feelings wouldn't stop. Not just his own feelings, either.

Today, as he quietly observed the daily activity in Skyhold, Cole noticed Solas's feelings most of all. As Estraven jogged through the rotunda with a joyful call and a wave as she passed, Solas made a conscious effort to restrain how visible his reciprocated happiness was. Cole felt the slight flutter in the elf's chest like it was his own - it was his own, sometimes, when Estraven laughed at him or stroked her thumb across his cheek. Similar, but not the same, tinged with sorrow.

He felt something of Estraven's when she looked at Solas, too. More fluttering, full of wishing and wanting and shyness. She liked the way his fingers drummed on his staff when he thought, wanted them to be in places Cole's fingers had been before.

"Do you want to kiss Solas?" Cole asked the Inquisitor as she undressed for bed. The sudden question made her flail around in her shirt, struggling to unstick her shoulders from the fabric. Cole gently tugged the garment off in one swift motion, leaving Estraven blinking up at him with messy hair.

"Do I want to kiss Solas?" she repeated.

"Yes."

The elf folded her arms before sitting on the edge of her bed, deep in thought. "I mean… yeah?" Her feet swung back and forth as Cole took a seat beside her. "I don't see why it matters, though. I don't think he feels the same way about me."

Cole rested his chin on her shoulder and grinned. "Do you want to know what _I_ think he feels about you?"

"Ye-- no!" Estraven laughed, tilting her head to plant a kiss on Cole's hair. "That's cheating! I don't want to know."

"You shoooould," Cole replied, his voice a good-natured teasing singsong. He ducked away as Estraven moved to playfully swat him on the arm, hopping up off the bed. "Such intense eyes when she listens, hands fidgeting, so much I could teach her --"

Estraven yelled, grabbing a pillow from off the bed and flinging it across the room at Cole as he laughed. "Stop it!" she squeaked, faceplanting into the sheets and covering her ears with her hands.

Pillow in his hands, Cole moved to sit on the bed again. "I think it would make you both happy if you did."

"It's embarrassing," Estraven mumbled into the bed before turning her face toward him. "Besides, wouldn't that bother you?"

Cole tilted his head. "No. Should it?"

Estraven shrugged, propping herself back up on her elbows and resting her chin in her hands. "I don't know. Other people seem to get mad about stuff like that -- their partners doing… that sort of thing with other people, I mean."

"Oh," Cole said, his fingers running across the silk pillowcase in his hands. "It doesn't bother me. I feel how much you love me. It doesn't go away if you love more people, too." He paused. "Or kiss them."

"I feel the same way." Estraven smiled and reached over to squeeze one of his hands in hers. "I'm really glad we found each other."

Cole brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed the back of it. "I am too."

### 

Cole then proceeded to spend the next several days attempting to set Solas up with his girlfriend.

Getting two people with the same feelings for one another to actually _acknowledge_ those feelings was a far more difficult task than he expected. Even if he could still make them forget him, he'd promised to never use that power on Estraven and… it had never worked on Solas anyway.

First he tried being subtle, although his version of subtlety was not dissimilar to using a battering ram to gently knock on someone's door. By the third time Estraven and Solas had found themselves mysteriously trapped in a room together with the door locked behind them, Cole got the sense they felt more uncomfortable around one another, if anything.

Next he tried arranging meetings in more pleasant, unlocked spaces. A note left on Estraven's pillow asked her to meet him by the parapets near Commander Cullen's office. A note on Solas's desk asked the same thing.

The two elves arrived right on time, and their expressions of confusion mirrored one another's as they saw each other.

They both looked down at the notes in their hands before looking back up at each other and sighing.

"Cole," they said in unison.

### 

"Varric, why is it so hard to get two people who both care for each other to act on it?" Cole sighed, his cheek resting against the tavern's rough wooden table.

The dwarf looked up from his writing. "You playing matchmaker again, kid?"

"Trying to. But it's not working." Cole's big blue eyes looked at Varric from under his messy curtain of hair. "It's like they're afraid of how they feel. But why? Love feels good."

Varric put his quill down. This could get complicated. "Well, there's a lot of reasons -- maybe the timing isn't right. Giving people a little push is all fine, but you can't force it. Otherwise it won't feel natural anymore, you know?" He scratched his jaw with a gloved hand. "Who are you trying to set up, anyway?"

"Estraven and Solas."

"The Inquisitor? I thought you and her were, uh…?"

"We are."

"Oh boy." Varric rubbed his temples. Romance between two people was tricky enough for him - adding in a third party was almost unfathomable. "I think this is above my pay grade, kid. You might wanna ask Tiny about this one."

### 

Cole asked Tiny about this one.

Iron Bull stretched in his chair, cracking his knuckles over his head. "Getting the two of them together is gonna be tough. I think you'd have to hold Solas at knifepoint before he ever admitted to any sort of… romantic inclinations."

"I don't want to pull a knife on Solas," Cole said with a frown.

"Wasn't suggesting it." The qunari tapped his fingers on the table. "You're gonna have to be the one to initiate things. Solas is probably freaked out because he doesn't know how you feel about all this. The boss is too shy. So it's on you."

Cole hmmm'ed lightly, swinging his feet back and forth under his chair. "Alright."

### 

"Solas, do you want to kiss both of us?"

Solas's hand screeched to a halt in the middle of reaching for Estraven's door handle, Estraven's head turned achingly slowly to look at Cole, and Cole stood between the two elves, batting his eyelashes innocently.

"I-I beg your pardon?" Solas coughed, an uncharacteristic flush creeping onto his cheeks as he turned around. Estraven put her face in her hands, trying to channel ice into her fingers to attempt to cool down her burning blush.

Cole's facial expression betrayed no embarrassment or shame as he blinked passively. "Estraven would really like to kiss you. I would too." He tilted his head. "Would that be okay?"

Solas wasn't often rendered speechless.

"You -- you don't have to!" Estraven spluttered, still unable to look at Solas. "I -- you're smart and kind and you have nice hands, and I think I'm making this worse but I can't stop talking or else I'll die probably, and--"

"Lethallan," Solas said softly, and Estraven stopped talking and didn't die. "I… this is certainly unexpected, but I'm not… adverse to the idea." He cleared his throat. "At all."

Cole smiled. "You're two of my favorite people. I wanted to help."

Estraven groaned. "Making me die of shame isn't the best way to help, Cole!"

"But why are you ashamed?" Cole asked, and before Estraven could respond he had gently put a hand on the small of her back, nudging her toward Solas. "You don't need to be embarrassed. Solas likes you too, you know. He wants to run his fingers through your hair."

"CREATORS," Estraven squeaked, covering her mouth.

Solas sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Cole, I think our dear Inquisitor might pass out if you keep this up."

Cole sat down on the edge of Estraven's bed, pulling her beside him, and Solas hesitantly took a seat on his other side. "And Solas, _you_ don't need to be so worried. She wants you to put your fingers in her mouth."

" _COOOOOLE_ ," Estraven wailed, twisting around and burying her face into her bedsheets.

Solas stifled a laugh behind his hand as he watched the Inquisitor attempt to tunnel under her blankets. "Lethallan, if you're under there, how can you see me kiss Cole?" he asked.

"What?" Estraven said, her head popping up from under the covers.

"What?" Cole said, his eyes widening as the tables were turned.

Solas's fingers reached up beneath Cole's chin, tilting his head up toward him as he leaned closer. "Is this alright with you, Cole?"

"Yes," the young man breathed immediately, and Solas pressed his mouth against Cole's full lips. Estraven shivered - seeing what Cole looked like kissing someone was… kind of amazing, actually.

There was so much she couldn't have appreciated without seeing him from a new angle - the way his jaw looked when he tilted his head into the kiss, the way his eyebrows knit together. He seemed to melt at Solas's touch, losing the impish confidence he'd had moments earlier, replaced by wanting.

After a few moments, they separated, and Cole stared at Solas through half-lidded eyes while Solas wore an expression dangerously close to a smirk.

"Oh," Estraven said, subconsciously pressing her knees together.

Solas's gaze turned toward her, and a jolt of adrenaline rushed down her spine. "May I?" he asked, and she nodded rapidly.

The kiss they shared wasn't as gentle as the one between Cole and Solas. It was uncertain at first, almost shy, and then months of unsaid feelings began rushing forth as Solas's tongue swiped against Estraven's bottom lip. She made a noise in spite of herself, a gasp muffled into his mouth, and in response his hand reached up to caress the back of her neck, gently pushing his fingers into her mess of black hair.

Cole watched happily, soaking in both of their emotions - Solas's hesitant joy turning into a restrained need, and Estraven's nerves dissolving into sheer bliss. Leaning toward Solas, he whispered into his ear, "She wants you to touch her more."

Estraven whimpered again, nodding against Solas's mouth, feeling his lips turn upwards in a little grin. "I think I can oblige," he said gently.

"We can -- this can be slow, right?" Estraven blurted, looking between Solas and Cole.

"Yes," Cole said instantly, punctuated by a nod of agreement from the other elf.

"It's -- this is so exciting and fun but it's overwhelming and -- are you sure I'm awake?"

Cole squeezed the Inquisitor's hand gently. "You are very much awake," Solas confirmed, "and we can go as quickly or as slowly as you like."

Estraven took a few steadying breaths, trying to quell her adrenaline rush and resulting dizziness before a shy smile returned to her face.

"But not -- not _too_ slowly."

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for not posting anything in months? Making your own game is incredibly time consuming and while I was working on pushing the demo out for conventions, I just couldn't justify taking time off to write fanfic. ;_; 
> 
> I'll try to update When You Sleep soon, since I still love that story and I'm determined to finish it! Thank you as always for reading.


End file.
